NewCreation

Homily for 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And this week our Gospel continues straight on from where we left it last time. Last time, you remember, was the parable of the judge of injustice and the importunate widow. In other words, it was about the importance of prayer, and it followed on from a run-in with the Pharisees where they had asked him about the coming of the kingdom and he'd given them an answer saying that it was in their midst. And then he'd given quite a long talk to his disciples about how to begin to detect that coming, which we missed out, because normally that comes just before the end of the Church's year, coming up to Advent. Immediately after that he starts talking about prayer to them — to the disciples — in the wake of how they've had to deal with the Pharisees. And now he talks to a new group of people. This is the only time he talks to this group of people, and it's rather important, because he could have said he told this parable to some Pharisees, or he told this parable to his disciples. But no: he told also this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. I wonder who those were. I'm going to leave that hanging for the moment, because we're going to come back to that at the end, since it's such an absolutely central part of how we find ourselves living our Christian faith now. But this is what Jesus told these people, and I hope you'll suspend your credulity a little bit and allow me to suggest to you that actually this is again one of Jesus's more humorous parables, meaning that it's full of gestures — and the Greek does hint at that even in the text — but from the Aramaic background one can tell that place and gesture were important in this. In other words, there's an element of parody going on here which Jesus is using to make a rather significant point. So let's look at this. "Two men went up to the Temple to pray: one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector." Now Jesus is talking on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem, going through the area close to Samaria. So it's probable he's talking about people like them going up to Jerusalem, which would be a standard pilgrimage route, probably a couple of times a year at least, to go to pray. So they're going to Jerusalem to pray. In other words, there's something deliberate about this — it's not just that they happen to drop in to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel one day. This is part of something deliberate: going up to the Temple. Then it says here — and I'm afraid this is a bad mistranslation, but there we are — "the Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus: God," etc., etc. Well, once again it's the King James that comes closer to the actual translation, and says "the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself God. It's nothing to do with him standing by himself; it's praying to himself. And actually the Aramaic background is our famous neck, sometimes which I translate as "ass." He was praying to his neck. He's praying with his neck, in other words, to himself. That's part of the parodic suggestion that this is an interior discourse. Basically, there's no one outside that than his own consideration. This is part of the parody of the thing. So the King James actually brings that out: "The Pharisee stood thus and prayed thus with himself." God, it's a joke, yes. If you're praying to God, you don't pray – you're not praying to yourself. So he's standing, neck high and praying to his neck. "God, I thank you" – eucharistō – "I thank you." The same word we have for Eucharist. "That I am not like other people." In other words, it's all about him. And who are these other people? Well, thieves. And let's imagine – so he's standing there, let's imagine these hand gestures. Thieves reaching out, rogues – actually the Greek says just "unjust" and the Aramaic says "profiteers" – rogues, profiteers, adulterers. So thieves reaching out, profiteers bringing to oneself, and adulterers ripping the ring off the finger. So you can imagine the gestures that the Pharisee is rather splendidly making. "I thank you that I'm not like those. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all my income" – well, yes, I give a tenth of all that I have got. It doesn't say how he's got it, but all that I've got. Remember, this is supposed to be a parody. The same word which is used as "got" here for ktaomai is used quite frequently in the Old Testament for having obtained spoils. And here's the point. Jesus is giving us a classic example of projection. He says, "I thank you that I'm not like…" and then he lists precisely some things that were considered to be true of the Pharisees. One, they were thieves in the sense they were always looking for ways to take money off people. Two, they were profiteers – they tried to become the hedge fund managers for widows to make a good profit off them. And adulterers – they were people who granted easy divorces, thus making other people adulterers. But also taking the ring off, they were people who were unfaithful to the alliance, to the covenant, because adultery always has the sense in the Hebrew background both of a particular act of marital misconduct but also the breaking of the covenant with God. So here we have this Pharisee who sees what goodness looks like – and remember that these were the people who would have normally be thought to be good. "I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all that I've got." No question of how I got it, but "I give a tenth of all that I've got." "I fast twice a week." In other words, "I make myself suffer a little bit. I have a system of goodness which allows me to know that I am good, and that's why I'm not like others" — and straight into projection. He looks at other people: thieves, profiteers, adulterers, and does not see himself. Which of course is exactly like us. And there are some people who are vaguely aware that when they're saying something they're in fact accusing themselves, and there are others who are gloriously completely unaware that the moment they accuse someone else of something, that is in fact exactly what they're doing or about to do themselves. This is classic projection. And Jesus is bringing that out. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven — in other words, where is his neck? His neck is hidden. But he was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." And that phrase is so familiar to us that we forget that actually that's the only time that word is used in this sense in Luke's Gospel. This is the basis, as I understand it, of the Jesus Prayer. "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" — this is the only place where that verb is used in that sense in Luke's Gospel. He uses other words for mercy throughout his Gospel. It is famously the Gospel of mercy, and this is like the culmination of his teaching on mercy, where he uses this verb: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." Jesus then says, "I tell you, this man, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other." Well, why should that be? Why the mention of a tax collector? Let's remember, all societies have tax collectors. A tax collector is a necessary evil in all societies that have taxes, which is all societies. A tax collector of whatever degree in Hebrew society at the time was someone who had made some sort of deal with a tax farm, unless he was actually the owner of the tax farm. But he's a person who would have bought the right to farm the taxes of a certain region for a certain amount of money. The Romans would have said, "Okay, we estimate that that region is worth $80,000 in a year. If you farm it, we will expect $70,000 from you. You can buy the rights for $70,000, which means that you will owe us $70,000 a year. Any more you make towards the $80,000, that's your profit. It's cheaper for us to outsource to you than it is to set up a team of tax collectors for ourselves." So a tax collector was an outsourced tax collector for the Romans, and was thoroughly hated — always, let's say, held in dubious regard; the person's reputation was likely to be poor. But, and here's the thing, the tax collector did not have a system of goodness. On the contrary, tax collectors actually had a very vulnerable life because, one, people hated them, so that always makes your life not a bundle of fun. Although they were probably rich, and therefore there was some worth to be got from that, on the other hand they were terribly vulnerable to changes in harvests and the like. Because the Romans, once they'd fixed their sum – let's say $80,000 for this area, you give $70,000 – then that was the sum that was owed year in, year out, independently of whether there was a good harvest, a bad harvest, whether there were hailstorms that destroyed the crops, etc. In other words, the tax collector was going to have to come up with that amount of money anyhow. So it's no surprise that the tax collector would try to take more in the good years so as to prepare himself for the bad years, in case he needed to pay off debt. So it wasn't only profiteering that caused tax collectors to be – let's say – somewhat rapacious. It wasn't just profiteering; it was an attempt to balance their books between good years and bad years. In other words, yes, the classic bad guy, but the bad guy with some – what's the word – a vulnerability: not belonging to a system of goodness, utterly dependent, if you like, on the weather, on acts of God in the broadest sense. And so he comes down. He doesn't speak to his throat; he speaks to his heart. He beats his breast and says to God, "Be merciful to me, a sinner." He does not have regard in his own eyes – no regard for himself in his own eyes. And so then Jesus says at the end, "All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." Of course, be glad to hear that all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. So all the physical movements are in this parable as well. There's the humorous element, and then the very, very touching element as well. Okay, now let's go back to the first verse of our Gospel for the day, which is the most difficult, because this is where we ask ourselves whether we – who are neither formally Pharisees nor formally tax collectors, I imagine, and if we are tax collectors, it's very unlikely that we're tax farmers in the old Roman sense – "He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt." Because how much of Christianity today is exactly this? It's self-justification by faith on the evangelical side, and self-justification by Church on the Catholic side. Because I am right, because I have been saved by Jesus, I can judge all the other people, because the Bible gives me permission to do so. Or because I am right, because I'm a Catholic and on the inside of the Church, I can judge all the people the Church disapproves of. And please remember, there is no such thing as these two… being separated. If you trust in yourself that you are righteous, then automatically you're defining yourself over against others with contempt. You may not realize it, but that's how we get a fake identity. How do we get a fake identity? Over against others. Once you start to realize that you are like others, then you lose that fake goodness, and you find yourself coming awfully close to the position whereby you realize, "Oh my God, I am a sinner, have mercy on me." And it's one — and I know this is no longer popular, because pop psychology keeps on telling people to forget about sin and so on and so forth — it's one of the reasons why the term "sinner" is such a good thing. To be able to say genuinely, not out of, you know, formulaic, "I am a sinner," and for that to be a sign of having been relaxed into not having to define yourself over against others: that is an extraordinary blessing, and is the sign indeed of being made right with God. God is forgiving us by revealing to us that we are sinners, and that's okay. Being a sinner is not the problem. Fake virtue is far more terrifying than sin. People who consider themselves righteous and simultaneously regard others with contempt. What must it look like in our midst for us to encourage a return of Christianity that understands this — that the being able to dwell in shame tenderly, and so know ourselves as sinners, and therefore find ourselves being realigned to God, is the norm, rather than creating a structure of security for ourselves which depends on wicked others whom we can despise. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.